Liberality of Love

I was raised a Republican. Fiscal conservatism was next to godliness in our house, and my father no doubt beamed with pride when in ninth grade, I wrote an essay called "Personal Responsibility and the Welfare System." My parents, thus, did not know what had come over me when late in college, I began to say things like "give to all who beg of you," and "turn the other cheek." That was not the Jessica--or the Jesus--they knew.

"Liberal" was a dirty word in our house, mainly equated with permissiveness. Liberals were those who didn't make people work for their livelihood, those who let guilty people walk free, and who didn't teach their children the evils of smoking, drinking, and sex.

Senior year, I learned a new definition to that nasty word. Dr. Blackwell, my favorite professor and mentor, often used the term "liberality of love," discussing the all-encompassing generosity with which Christ calls us to live our lives. Rather than a synonym for libertine, I came to understand "liberal" in the same sense a recipe would call for "a liberal amount of sugar." Not a willingness to allow all things without upholding standards, true liberalism is a willingness to give and give and give. To love and love and love.

Perhaps if liberals embraced this self-definition, and expressed their positions on welfare, war, life, and family in terms of a standard of caring for all humanity, others would understand that liberals do in fact stand for something, and that something is the thing that Christ told us was everything. Love.